


Majuscule and Minuscule

by Jaetion



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alphabet Meme, Gen, Headcanon, Minor Canonical Character(s), Orlais
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-04
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 04:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/451272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaetion/pseuds/Jaetion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doing the Alphabet Challenge for Charade, Hawke's displaced cousin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Arrows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara left more than a lover behind when she fled from Kirkwall and she left with more than what she'd put in her pockets.

Mara fletched arrows at night, after dinner when Charade was at her quietest. Her daughter was a good enough child, obedient enough when it didn’t conflict with her curiosity. But Mara knew that there were more important qualities than compliance: Charade was brave and quick, with the endurance of someone twice her age.

Her fingers moved with a well practiced sureness, flicking through feathers from the bird she’d caught and served for dinner. Suitable ones went into a basket, unsuitable into a pouch. They’d never have enough for a mattress, not even a pillow, but Mara saved whatever she got her hands on that they didn’t eat. Even if it only got them a few coppers next time they reached a town. She had enough for travel, of course; Mara didn’t flee from Kirkwall with just the clothes on her back and pockets full of nothing but old love letters. She’d sewn gold into the hems of her pants, jacket. When she’d got to Cumberland, she’d spent most of it on that painful time when her pregnancy and then the baby kept her from work. They could have stayed there, and there were times when Mara desperately wanted to. She could have married some merchant, some dock worker, even, anyone to mind Charade while she rebuilt her fortune. But Cumberland wasn’t far enough away, and the city’s people weren’t different enough. After two winters there, she started moving again, this time with a daughter in tow instead of a wagon.

Slicing through the quill took as little attention as the sorting. The calluses on her fingers absorbed the nicks of her knife as she cut the feathers. “Here, child,” she said when Charade’s small face peered up from over the edge of the table. “Make groups of three. You can count to three, can’t you?”

“Yes, Mama,” she said, holding up three fingers.

“There’s my girl.”

Charade climbed up to the bench and plucked at the feathers. She did as asked, mostly, getting distracted sometimes by the ticklish edges of the vanes. When she was done arranging all the feathers that Mara had trimmed, she watched the flashing cuts of the knife. “Can I do that? I want my own.”

“Knife? Not yet.” She snorted but was pleased at the question. Charade was her daughter, all right, all determination and readiness. At Charade’s disappointed pout, she added, “When you’re older.”

“Promise?”

Promises came cheap to some people, but Mara had never made one without intending to pay it back. “Of course. It’s just us two, and I’ll need your help, won’t I?”

“Just us,” Charade repeated happily. “Just us, just us.”

She’d teach her how to weird a knife and how to use a bow, and how to stay sharp and quick. All the things her parents had neglected, so when the day came when it was just her instead of them two, she’d be able to stay and fight instead running like Mara had.


	2. B is for Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mara and Charade continue to travel, moving further from Kirkwall.

The jewels she’d taken before leaving Kirkwall lasted longer than the money, which Mara credited to her useless sentimentality. As they walked through some village just over the border, something with a name like Roan-sur-mer and Ardes-la-belle, she rolled the last ring in her glove, rubbing the jewels against her palm. Her other hand held Charade’s, who swung their arms as they walked through the market.

It was one of the better ones; being by the sea allowed for trading, legal and otherwise, and between fish stalls were book sellers and smiths, bakers and dressmakers with silks from Val Royeaux itself.

“You said I could have whatever I wanted,” Charade reminded her mother, for at least the tenth time since they’d climbed out of their sleeping rolls. “Whatever I wanted!”

“That I did, my girl,” she replied absently. She was thinking about Gamlen, which still left a sour taste in her mouth, like the memories had rotted with age. Gamlen would have pawned the ring ages ago, if he’d even managed to save it at all. The ring, only silver with only garnets, would get them a feast for Charade’s birthday. A waste, Mara thought with a frown. Keeping it would give them another small security. 

“I want a cake! Cakes! Those ones with the white sugar melted on top. With the fruit! Or that puppy!”

Each stall had something else she wanted. Mara kept her hand firmly over Charade’s so the girl wouldn’t run to put her fingers in it all. When they finished the first circle, Charade looked up at her mother expectantly. “What do you want, Mama?”

Mara frowned again. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it? Your choice, whatever you want.”

“You aren’t happy though.”

She looked down at Charade’s pout. They’d chopped her hair to a manageable length some weeks earlier, but already it was curling down into her face, unruly and tangled by the sea breeze. Compared to who Mara had been in her own childhood, Charade was some sort of forest spirit, or maybe some wild elf. No recognizable child, anyway. “I’m thinking about money, rabbit,” she said. Uncertain of how else to address her daughter, she went with adult honesty. “We could spend it now, like I said, or we could save the ring, tuck it away for an emergency. Orlais is peaceful here, peaceful now, but we don’t know what we’ll find once we start moving again.”

Charade yanked her hand free. “But you said!” She clamped her mouth shut and puffed her cheeks full of an angry breath, holding it until her face turned red. Then she stamped her foot and said in a voice loud enough that the fishmonger looked over, “Andraste’s sacred arse!”

Then the tantrum was over. Charade took Mara’s hand again. “Next year I want a cake and a puppy.”

She stared half in awe, half in amusement. “That’s it then?”

“Are you mad that I used a curse word?”

“No. Probably learned from me anyway.” She bought two rolls, much cheaper than birthday cake but just as fresh, and they walked down the water, following the shore until they found a patch with enough sand to sit on. Charade kicked off her boots and waded to look for crabs, and Mara took the ring from her glove and pulled a strand of twine free. When Charade came back empty-handed and sat at her feet, Mara tugged her daughter’s messy hair up out of her collar. “Here, girl. You hold onto the ring until we need it.”


	3. C is for Courier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charade's childhood was a strange mix of the sacred and the profane. She had Mara's wits but Gamlen's dissoluteness.

Charade became a courier before she could read. She excelled at it - not because a child couldn’t have secrets, but because she couldn’t be coerced into divulging them. Mara had always called her a stubborn child, a superlative her mother had always said like a compliment and not a criticism. Charade was stubborn and was good at dodging, at denying, and at flat-out lying. By the time she was twelve she had a reputation in the darkness of Val Royeaux’s back alleys. L’ombre, they called her. Shadow.

Charade kept secrets, hoarding them like the nobles did gold. And she didn’t need one of the ornate masks that the upperclass wore to hide her face. Hardly anyone noticed a thin, street-dusty girl anyway, and with her quickness they didn’t have to see more than a flicker of cloth before she turned a corner. 

As she learned to decipher the thin loops and swirls of the written word, she sometimes opened letters. Only the poorly sealed ones, those she could close up again without the recipient knowing. it didn’t take long for her to realize that were really only three types of letters: I love you, I hate you, I’ll kill you. Variations, of course, or funny combinations. She liked to imagine what happened after they were read, if the words ever came true. After dropping off a particularly amusing one, Charade bought an only somewhat bruised apple from her earnings and sat on a nearby staircase and decided that she’d never be mad over anyone like that. Never ever.

Letters didn’t get delivered directly to the target, but to sympathetic butlers and maids in on the conspiracy. Charade never entered through the front doors, and instead slipped into kitchens or cellars like the servants. As she grew older, she spent more time with the kitchen girls and serving boys, flirting for gifts of wine and pastries with cream so light it seemed to float off the dough. She brought these gains back to her mother, who never asked where or how.


	4. D is for Da

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Young Charade runs errands for money in Orlais.

D is for Da

One delivery - a thinly-veiled invitation for a tryst - Charade caught a glimpse of the rest of the estate. She had come in through the servants’ entrance like usual, but when the butler turned away she crept up the stairs into a hallway with a ceiling as high as a cathedral’s. Candles brighter than the sun lit up the painted ceilings and turned the marble statues gold. There were clouds and birds above her, women with wings and lions in crowns standing around as mute witnesses. She boggled for a moment, eyes and mouth wide, before practicality reasserted itself: one statue would get them all the way to Denerim and back on a ship of their own, or a room near the university instead of by the alienage, or the bow Charade had seen in the market, the one carved out of white wood and arched like a dragon’s neck. 

She hadn’t touched anything when a door opened. Not the creak-squeal of their front-and-only door, but a rolling purr that ended with a crash as it swung into pottery, or another statue, or some other fancy doorstop.

He was tall, slender in his dark leggings.

Charade ducked in the shadow of some drooping fern and watched. Her letter was clutched in his gloved hands, and the paper that had seemed so pale and delicate looked crinkled and stained against the cream silk. He pushed his mask into his thick black hair and his blue eyes were as bright and flashing as the rings that lined his knuckles. He was no youth, but he was ages younger than Mara: no wrinkles, no streak of gray, no sloping shoulders. When he shifted his weight, his cloak swirled around his long legs as smooth as water.

The man looked up suddenly and with a hiss Charade jerked back. A thrill shivered down her spine and she gulped down a breath, holding it in her lungs in case he could hear her breathing. Had he seen her? Realized that she’d read the letter?

Maybe he’d demand to see her, have her hauled out of her hiding space like a criminal being dragged to the dungeon. But his footsteps faded as he climbed up some set of stairs, and after waiting, just to be sure, Charade scrambled up and away. Her hand was on the knob to the servants’ stairs when she turned around and after making sure the way was empty, flew down the grand hall to the main entrance. It took all her might to get front door opened but she cracked it enough to slide through and out.

She snatched a roll cooling on a rack behind a distracted baker and retreated to her neighborhood to eat it in peace. Charade stared at the bite she’d made in the round bread: a hard thing, made of grain only one step above what they fed to the pigs. As she chewed through the crust she thought about the piles of food in the man’s kitchen, and it didn’t take long for her daydream to cycle back to him and his eyes behind his mask. Mara never said one way or the other, but Charade was sure that her da - wherever he was - wasn’t the right sort of father. If he’d been, he’d be with them in their little room sharing Mara’s bed instead of Charade. She’d call him “da” and not “papa” like the Orlesian children did, not even if he were one of the lords or the shiny chevaliers. Maybe one day she’d have a letter for him, and instead of sneaking in like a thief he’d have her announced like a lady, with servants lined up in a procession to witness her arrival. He’d recognize the shape of her eyes or the way her second toe was longer than her big toe - something that marked her as one of them. They’d be a family and Mara wouldn’t have to work the mines. 

Charade couldn’t miss what she never had, but she still wondered about the man who had chosen a life divorced from theirs.


End file.
